It costs Barcelona City Council 300 million euros every year to clean the streets. A fortune. Is it justified? Yes, yes and yes. In Ada Colau’s time, before the mayoress bowed her head and was forced to expand an expense that she kept frozen, the dirt had begun to crust on sidewalks, corners and parks. In silver, she ate the shit out of our feet. In the end, Colau authorized the change of contract and it began to operate in March of last year. There was no other more expensive contract in the entire municipal budget, which gives the measure of citizen anger. To give the reader an idea, the works on the tramway from Glòries to Verdaguer have cost 108 million.
With the new cleaning company, the neighbors recover the joy of walking without having to stare at the ground or juggle so as not to step on something.
How short the joys last.
This summer a part of the city has gone to bed again and to get up dirty.
The heavenly music with the trio of more hoses, more machines and more brooms has not sounded as good as in the first bars. Now that music doesn’t come down from heaven. It rises from the ground, direct to our nostrils, eye and nose. It is the fault of the citizens who do not learn, residents and tourists. Or that he has unlearned his first-year civics lesson. The City Council can now irrigate its streets with gold, that little can be done if the basics are missing: education. We are free and Mediterranean, bah, damn excuse for so much filth.
Dirt calls dirt, and it goes through neighborhoods. But it is not necessary to go to that Ciutat Vella of the flip-flop tourism. It is enough to take a walk through some more or less crowded areas of the Eixample. Before 10 in the morning, the brigades work to remove the rubbish accumulated during the night. On the floor and in various corners, there are sticky, solid and liquid concoctions, organic, inorganic or of unidentified origin. In addition to cans, cigarette butts, plastic wrappers, glasses, papers, bags and containers overflowing with garbage. In the following hours, apparently cleanliness and order are restored… Until sunset, when the peasantry goes through everything again.
It is understood that the new mayor does not want dirt to bite his heel and that it be Achilles’ heel. Jaume Collboni has already said that he will send twice as many inspectors to sniff out the streets and the work of the brigades. We wish him all the luck in the world because he will need it.
